Human Intercourse

You realise that when you're told that CEOs read sixty books a year there's an implicit statement there that those are worthwhile books, for some value of worthwhile?  Ah, I wish you weren't looking so puzzled.  Yes, yes, you're reading books, but they're books aimed at children.  Rather young children, in fact.  No, I think you'll find that the expected age for someone reading Mr. Bump is three.  I'm sure it is very educational, but reading sixty Mr. Men books in a year is not something to shout about unless you're still of an age when you haven't learned not to shout.  Hmm.  Well, it's odd you should ask that actually, since I do know someone perhaps a little older than you who would have genuinely benefitted from reading the Mr. Men books.  Well, perhaps having them read to him.  No, he's a Director of Technology... ah, I see that pride and hubris are the ways to your heart.  Yes, you're quite right, someone who wants to be CEO shouldn't be picking their books from a mere Director's reading list.
I'm Buddy.  No, I don't work for you. And no, security won't come up and throw me out, they let me in.  Yes, I'm expected, although perhaps not by you, and that's usually the case.  I'm a life-coach, a guru of sorts, a transcendental meditationalist... no, not a transformational medalist, though I was one of those briefly as well.  One of the Olympic Games.  No, I'm not telling you which country I represented, but I am mildly flattered by the asking.  Put your phone away – photographing me was uncalled for.  Well I'm glad it's not come out clearly.  Don't try again or I'll break your wrist.  What?  Some secret guru trick, obviously.  It took me sixteen years in the wilderness to learn it, seeking out an ancient and wise teacher and submitting to humiliation, punishment and heartache.
Well if you must know the Wilderness is a club in LA, but all the rest is right.  Well ok, years might be hours, and wise might be drug-addled and heartache might be heartburn.  It's the thought that counted in this case and I can still break your wrist.
So I'm here to talk to about human intercourse.  Yes, yes, I was expecting you to say that.  And that.  No, I wasn't expecting you to show me that, please put your phone away now.  I believe you.  Of course I believe you, you've just shown me the picture.  Thank-you.  Human intercourse, or the ability to hold a conversation with someone.
Yes, and that's the problem; you can't manage people if you can't relate to them, and you can't relate to people if you can't talk to them, and you seem pathologically incapable of saying the right thing.  I've seen the list of complaints made about you and frankly, if I were your HR team, I'd be sending you in for biological salvage and reprocessing.  What?  What year is this?  Damn, I could have sworn it was... never mind.  I'd have had you sacked and evicted from your home, then hunted from city to city by killer-clown and murder-hobos.  Yes.  Yes they're a thing.  They're going to be very big in a couple of months.  Anyway, your HR team have asked me to intervene a little.
Thoreau said something useful here, but I don't like quoting people other than myself as it dilutes my brand, so I'm going to tell you a little parable instead.  This is the parable of the parrot and the dermatologist.
Once upon a time there was a parrot that lived in a cage that was located on the 26th floor of a very expensive building somewhere not too far from Manhattan.  The parrot had an owner who was blind, both physically and mentally.  Every day the owner would clumsily fill the parrot's feed dish, and add water to the cage, and then, in the silence of the parrot's feeding, would call her son and believe the lies he told her for anywhere up to an hour on the phone.  After the phonecall was over the parrot was always quiet while it digested its food and considered the side of the conversation that had been audible to it, and so it would listen contently while its owner talked some more and debated with herself if she was good enough mother and what she could do to be more loving.  On one occasion she sent a large basket of sweaters, gloves and legwarmers to her son to surprise him, and on another she ordered a hundred bouquets of flowers to be sent to all the staff in his office with a small card attached containing a random quotation from Dorothy Parker.  The parrot would silently approve, and the owner would feel validated.
One day the owner felt that while she was doing everything she could for her son she was perhaps neglecting the parrot a little, and so she called a dermatologist to come and exfoliate the parrot and perhaps provide it with a little massage.  She considered her finances, and decided that the parrot could even request a 'happy ending' if it was so inclined.  The dermatologist arrived at the appointed time and was led, stumblingly, to the parrot's cage.
"Oh dear," said the dermatologist.
It transpired that the owner had weighed the parrot down under the load of birdseed and then waterboarded it repeatedly until it drowned, all unaware that her attempts to care were mere murder.
What?
The moral of the tale is that lying to your mother will cause your staff to stop working and ponder why eternity should be a man, a woman, and a ham locked in a room.
Ok, how about, the moral of the tale is that tragedy happens when silence is misunderstood? Or possibly that you shouldn't sell parrots to blind people?
Your takeaway from this?  If you have to ask, you didn't listen hard enough, did you?  Well... no, I don't think I want to tell that tale again.  OK, so your takeaway should probably be that staff like gift baskets, but that legwarmers won't be back in fashion again for another twenty years. Go with that, I'm sure it'll help sort the complaints out.

Acting on impulse

They say that a man is happy if his business is his pleasure.  I'm actually here today to tell you that although you may have achieved this, your business is a cruel and disturbing one, and you should probably stop doing it.
Well yes, and stop doing that actually.  It'll send you blind.
No, seriously, stop doing that please, or I'll get the scissors out and cut them off.
There, that wasn't so hard was it?  Well yes, I suppose arguably it was, but.... Yes, I am allowed to sigh at you like that.  I need ways to convey these things, and you don't seem to pay any attention to normal cues.  No, I don't know why you don't pay attention.  No, nor do I care.  Well go and see a psychiatrist then.  They're paid to listen to you neurot at them.  Actually it is a word, because I'm allowed to neologise.  I've done my time in the word-mines thank-you, and if I want to introduce neurot then I may.  And I think you'll find it's the answer to 17 across in this Saturday's Listener.
Well maybe you should.
No, I've been hired by your HR team.  Ok, your ex-HR team, and I'm sure they'll be delighted to discover that on Monday.  Ah, really?  That's probably one of the reasons that they've hired me then.  Because hiring sky-writers to let them know they're fired is expensive, unnecessary and humiliating.  No, hiring chuggers to go door-to-door in their neighbourhoods and spread the word of the sacking seems just as expensive and unnecessary.  No, I think posting it up in the local post-office, supermarket and restaurants is also unnecessary and humiliating.  Well I suppose there's an element of caring in that suggestion – I said an element, not to go ahead and do it!  Oh good grief, seriously?  You need to learn to control your impulses: people do not want their elderly mothers calling them and telling them that you've fired them and threatened to burn down their nursing homes.  Well I definitely didn't know you were joking.  No, I don't think she did either.  No.  No.  Oh good grief.  Why do even know the phone number of an arsonist?  Give me that.  Give. ME. THAT.  Damn it, you've got a grip like a sacculina barnacle.
Right, look.  The problem here is that you're impulse-driven and so much so that you can't even stop and recognise it.  Let me tell you a short parable, the tale of the ghost of my dead wife.
"Once upon a time there was a man who lived happily with his wife in a small house in a cul-de-sac not far from the magnificent Cathedral of the Derived Mind.  One day he was looking for the rat poison as there were rats seemingly getting into the cupboard where the rice sack was kept.  Looking at the bottle with its vivid green label and its little black skull and crossbones he was seized by an uncommon impulse and added a generous shot to the cup of tea he'd made for his wife.  Shortly thereafter, while he was poisoning the rice that the rats were eating, his wife drank her tea, and then retired to bed in pain.  That evening she died, and the man was moderately upset.
Three days later he brought home another woman he'd met while standing in line at the supermarket checkout.  She was tall and calm and wore fishnet stockings, a skirt that didn't quite cover her thighs and a bustier that was two sizes too small.  The man showed her into his bedroom and then hurried to the bathroom to brush his teeth and clean anything that was sweaty.  Such as his palms. When he turned the lightswitch on, the ghost of his dead wife was sat on the edge of the bath.
"Not now, woman," he said through clenched teeth, hoping that the woman in the bedroom wouldn't hear him.  "Come back tomorrow and moan at me then."
"You know she's a whore?" said his dead wife.  She opened her mouth in laughter and the man saw the flames of hell flickering at the back of her throat.
"She named her price in the supermarket," he said. "It was less than the groceries I was intending to buy."
"That does indeed sound like a bargain," said the woman.  "But when you buy the apples that are cheap, don't they often contain worms?"
"Well isn't that a lovely image?" said the man, brushing his teeth with vigour.  "I'm sure that will put me off if I let myself think about it.  Which I won't do, thank-you."
"Bury me properly and I'll let you get on sleeping with diseased, gold-digging bitches," said the ghost calmly. "Otherwise I'm going to keep kicking up a stink.  Literally, probably."
"I buried you!"
"You dragged me out to the back-garden and put the paddling pool on top of me," said the ghost of his dead wife.  "Foxes were chewing my skull last night, and I think one of my arms has been dragged off by a badger."
"Is that what that noise was?"
"You might have looked out of the window," said the ghost.  "But no, you and your hands were busy with each other.  You're pathetic, you know."
"And you're dead," said the man.  "Now let me get on with entertainment that doesn't require me to be solo."
"Bury me properly."
"Where?"
"In the grounds of the cathedral, of course."
And so it was some hours later the man prevailed on the prostitute to take two suitcases away from the house with her and deposit them in the gardens of the cathedral, where the custodians found them and their contents and promptly had the police arrest her and accuse her of murder.  She led them back to the small house, but the man in there was also dead, having eaten poisoned rice."
What?  Oh yes, there's a moral to this tale.  It's that prostitutes should be very careful to explain up-front what they're being paid for and not take on any additional tasks no matter how generous the offer may sound.
No, you don't look much like a prostitute, but I don't really know what a prostitute does look like.  Well there are other morals you could take away from the tale.  Like how sex is bad for you or how you should avoid having foxes chew your skull or something.
Yes, I imagine that your ex-HR team might let foxes loose in the office after they all get called by their elderly mothers.  Or at least after the nursing homes start burning down.
Yes, I do think calling the arsonist back might be a good idea.  No, I'm not telling you where I live.  No.  No.  Stop asking, or I'll tell you another parable.
Thank-you.

Elephant tusks

There is a saying: are there any elephant tusks in a rat's mouth?
The keeper of antiquities in Li-Dong National Museum knows that there are, because the rats in Li-Dong are of an abnormally large size, and there is a great collection of elephant tusks held in the basement of the National Museum.  The rats are often seen to scamper through, their tails coiling behind them like pink whips, carrying elephant tusks in their mouths, though no-one will offer an explanation or venture a guess as to why.  The keeper of antiquities often looks quite cheerful when he says that there are indeed elephant tusks in a rat's mouth.
However, two weeks ago on an inauspicious Monday – he knew it was inauspicious by the way the leaves fell from the beech tree in the garden despite it not being autumn, and because the milk curdled when he poured into his bowl of über-bran cereal – he made this reply to a couple of visitors to the museum, and was surprised that they listened to him.
"You see!" said the younger man of the pair.  "You see, I have said many times that to create a parable out of nonsense only infuriates the universe and causes it to give meaning to the nonsense you speak.  It is dangerous, oh gangrenous master!"
"Fool student," said the older of the men, shaking his head slowly from side and side and causing a slow but steady fall of white hairs from his scraggly beard.  "The universe is unconcerned by the infestations that dwell within it, just as you are unconcerned by the symbiotic bacteria that live in your gut.  Yet if the infestation should fail then the larger organism will be taken down by its very absence, so it behooves the larger to consider the smaller in all things.  This means, to my unending sorrow, that I must heed your words, though they speak only the mind of an idiot, and that I must take the time and trouble to correct you."
"Any time you're ready, oh unhealthy one," replied the student.  "I am still waiting on your wisdom from the wedding of the Jojobans, so I trust you will understand that I am not holding my breath that I might hear you more clearly, at least not until you start speaking."
"Child," said the master not unkindly, "you have the wisdom of a monkey who grabs at the reflection of the moon in a woodland pond, not realising that by attempting to seize only the image he declares his fascination with the material above the spiritual.  The wedding of the Jojobans is desirous of a proverb, and such a distillate of wisdom is not something that dribbles daily from the tap–"
"Do your own laundry then," whispered the student, and the master appeared not to hear.
"– and it will necessarily take as long as is necessary.  However, the correction you need is that the universe has no functioning anthropic principle, strong or weak.  It was not put here for you, but it will attempt to accommodate you so long as you do not bend it out of shape too much.
"Is there not a proverb that asks for what the universe was created if not the entertainment of man?"
"There is, but again, you overlook a key point."
"What's that?"
"You assume that you are sufficiently sane to understand the universe."